Director of Audience

Pick up your calculator. Making the Class A playoffs just got a little trickier.

This fall marks the beginning of several structural changes for Georgia High School Association football, softball, basketball and baseball teams, including a postseason split for public and private schools in Class A.

And with it comes a new power ranking system to determine which teams advance to the playoffs.

In the new structure, the only surefire way for a Class A school to make the playoffs is for it to win a region championship.

The only other guarantee is that the public and private playoff brackets will have 16 teams apiece.

Will they be the correct 16 teams? Will they be the best 16 teams? Will a team have to travel several hundred miles to another corner of the state for a first-round playoff game?

Those are all important questions, coaches and GHSA officials have said, but no one will know the answers until the chips fall where they may and the numbers gets plugged in.

“We certainly hope this is going to be a useful tool,” GHSA director Ralph Swearngin said. “Given the idea that public and private schools will need to play each other during the regular season then take separate paths to the championship, it appears to be the best way to make the playoff bracketing.”

In short, schools with region titles — up to eight of them for the state’s eight regions in football, basketball, softball and baseball — automatically qualify for the playoffs. The remaining seeds will be determined by an algorithm that awards points for accomplishments and compensates for opponents’ records and classifications.

Each win is worth 10 points in the new system, a loss is worth nothing and a tie is worth five points. Factor in two points — win or lose — for each level of classification the opponent is above Class A.

Next, take an opponent's number of wins and divide it into the total number of total games played, which should be 10 unless a game is canceled. Take that number and multiply it by 10, essentially giving a point for each of an opponent's wins.

In this scenario, imagine Private School of Class A defeating Public School of Class AA, which has a 3-7 record. Private School picks up 10 points for the victory and earns two more points for defeating a school one classification higher. And with Public School’s 3-7 record, Private School earns another three points for a total of 15 points.

Confused?

So is nearly everyone else.

“It immediately brings some concerns because it is very complicated,” Swearngin said. “... And my guess is that, like the BCS in college football, some people will always suspect the numbers are wrong or skewed.”

The public-private split came in January after years of strife, raised largely by leaders from a sect of public schools tired of competing with limited resources against private schools with more money, better facilities and a larger area from which to draw talent.

Since the GHSA’s vote to break the postseason up into two brackets, many on both sides have expressed concerns. Some public schools weren’t worried about the issue to begin with. Some private schools were upset because their enjoyed competing against public schools or because programs felt it might water-down their accomplishments.

But with the system set and politics at least temporarily put aside, coaches are focusing on doing all they can to better their chances of landing one of the 16 spots in the power rankings, preferably by winning a region title.

“You’re just going to have to play to win and play to win the region, because at least you’re automatically in,” Prince Avenue Christian head coach Mark Farriba said. “After that, I guess you’ll just have to kind of wait around for someone to tell you whether you made it or not. It looks like that will go down to the last week of the season with all the factors in it.”

If the math is tough, the waiting is excruciating. With teams competing for spots against the entire state and no longer just their own region, few will be able to accurately determine their placement from week to week without crunching the numbers for everyone else, too.

“It’s going to be a little bit tougher this year because we just don’t really know where we’re going to fall from week to week,” Athens Academy coach Michael Gunn said. “Three-fourths the way through the year, you won’t know for sure what kind of standing you have. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out.”

The power rankings also mean that teams yet to wrap up a region title won’t be able to let up, even against non-region opponents. Each week’s matchup, no matter how difficult or meaningless in a region race, could determine a team’s playoff fate.

“Every game now, even if it’s non-region, it counts for something,” Athens Academy senior lineman Charlie Newcomer said. “It’s a completely different system now, kind of like the colleges, and it means you don’t ever get a break. It’s going to make it a tough season for everyone.”